Seeing how this has started to become a recurring theme I've decided to make an actual thread for this thing, so here comes my current version of the phonology. I'm currently reckoning with the language being spoken somewhere eastwards, maybe round the Urals area? and that these people probably tagged along with the Iranians and/or Tocharians for a while before they split off north, hence several phonological commonalities can be found. Shared with Iranian we find satemisation, ruki and the complete merger of non-high vowels with accompanying palatalisation from *e. Shared with Tocharian we have the collapse of the three obstruent rows, though the exacts means and path this takes differs markedly from Tocharian. I'm not discussing sound changes for now, just presenting the inventory as it currently stands. I reckon this language is fairly old, something like 2 thousand years BP, and I'm not certain whether I'll have a modern daughter or not.

But anyway, onto the phonology.

/p t k/
/s ʂ ɕ h/
/m n/
/w ɾ j/

/i iː u uː/
/ɛː ə/
/ɑ̃ ɑ̃ː/

Note that this latest version contains glides, which the previous version lacked. This is because I've decided against *jə *wə > /i u/ when the glides don't immediately follow a consonant. Other than there though the glides still tend to merge with the vowels a lot.

Syllable structure is currently turning out (C)V(C), where vowel-initial syllables are word-initial. Stress seems to be fairly boringly word-initial, blame the Uralic-speakers I guess.

OK, so I'm gonna make a couple of modifications to the inventory, specifically I'm gonna add /θ/.

OK, sound changes.

First of all we have satemisation (I'm inclined to take the centum situation to be the PIE one, but that's irrelevant for these purposes). The reflexes of the palato-velars universally end up as the dental fricatives /θ s/ eventually (probably passing through a sibilant affricate stage), while the plain velars and labiovelars are merged as plain velars.

Laryngeals are lost, with the usual colouring of the vowels a seen elsewhere in IE, and lengthening of syllabic resonants also occurs. Syllabic laryngeals become short non-high vowels; There is possible indirect evidence for a triple reflex, however otherwise it is unclear due to the general collapse of non-high vowels. As in Indo-Iranian, h2 causes aspiration on a voiceless plosive before it. Word-initial pre-consonantal laryngeals are lost.

Then we have the ruki sound change. This retracted *s back to what would eventually become a retroflex sibilant /ʂ/. Remaining *s is lenited to /h/.

*l is lost, however there is variation as to whether it merges with *j or *r or is lost completely (the ɕəɕ/ɕəʂ/ɕək isogloss).

The new plain velars are palatalised before front vowels (*i *e in short and long, and also *j). This is what pushes the satemised palatovelars to dental position. Note that those varieties which merged *l with *j palatalise before this new *j as well ("ɕəɕ" varieties). *j before a vowel is then lost after these new palatalised consonants.

Voicing is lost in plosives. Voiced stops merge with plain voiceless, while voiced aspirates become voiceless.

Non-high vowels collapsed, probably as *a in long or short. Note the absence of Brugmann's Law.

Syllabic resonants are lost. *r̩/l̩ merge with *a, while *m̩/n̩ continue as nasalised ɑ̃ (long forms arising from laryngeal loss stay long). Furthermore *an/*am when not before a vowel became long nasalised ɑ̃ː.

Aspiration came to be realised as strong velar frication with plosives, while aspirated affricates (from satemisation and palatalisation) became corresponding fricatives (so *tsʰ from *ǵʰ becomes modern /s/, *tɕʰ from palatalised *gʰ/gʷʰ becomes /ɕ/). Note that this is likely to have taken place after the second palatalisation, since we do not see a palatalisation of the velar element (so *tx from *dʰ never becomes *tɕ).

*tx become *tk, and velar frication is lost (resulting in a merger of *dʰ with unpalatalised *k, *kʷ, *g, *gʷ, *gʰ and *gʷʰ). This *tk cluster is simplified to /k/ when not inter-vocalic.

Obstruent + r and r/ʂ + plus obstruent clusters (where the obstruent is non-labial, i.e. not *p) become retroflex fricatives/affricates (*rʂ clusters from the ruki rule had presumeably already simplified by this point, but *kʂ clusters probably simplified here). Dialects which turned *l into *r also show retroflexion here ("ɕəʂ" varieties). Remaining coda-r is lost with compensatory vowel lengthening.

*wr clusters metathesise to *rw. Then *a(ː)j *a(ː)w are raised to /iː uː/ when not before a vowel. Post consonantal *ja(ː) *wa(ː) are similarly simplified to /i(ː) u(ː)/.

*a *aː are raised/fronted to /ə ɛː/.

Stress has at some point become almost completely word-initial, however it is post-initial if the first vowel is schwa and second is not.

Coda -h in an unstressed syllable is lost, shortly followed by all word-final non-nasal short vowels (byebye o-stem nominative singular). Similarly unstressed word-initial schwa is lost. /h/ is also lost after a consonant word-finally.

*ts is fronted to /θ/, while other affricates merge with there fricative counterparts.

Interesting. It does look vaguely Tocharian-like, which is something I don't remember seeing done in conlangs before.

Someone must have done a Tocharian-esque IE-lang at some point, I doubt I'm being entirely original here.

You mention that the speakers of this language were (possibly) situated somewhere near the Urals; have they been in contact with Finno-Ugric peoples?

Yes that's what I'm assuming, however the effects probably won't be that strong just yet, but the modern descendants will likely show it a lot more. As the sound changes indicate, a lot of the early stuff is shared with Indo-Iranian, which I'm reckoning at the stage the language is currently at will have had the most effect on the sound system, whereas Finno-Ugric influence will be more recent and smaller-scale.

I'm a bit puzzled by /a/ aperture always nasal when it could simplify with apparently no confusion. Do you care to explain? Also wondering about the morphosyntax and its evolution, have you sketched it?

I'm a bit puzzled by /a/ aperture always nasal when it could simplify with apparently no confusion. Do you care to explain? Also wondering about the morphosyntax and its evolution, have you sketched it?

Actually the open vowel having some degree of nasalisation is actually fairly common cross-linguistically due to the connection between the lowered tongue position and the lowering of the velum. See for instance Thai which shows variable nasalisation of the low vowel /a/, the spontaneous nasalisation of long /a:/ in some Eastern Algonquian languages, and also Iau, where the low vowel is also nasalised and nasalises preceding voiced stops.

As for morphosyntax, I'm working on it. I'm currently wondering how much the case system will have been simplified by this point, because the sound changes as they stand wreak havoc on the markers. As for verbs ideas are sketchier, but I'm thinking grammaticalise some auxilliaries to rebuild the verb system, more so in the daughters.

Of these the vocative is undoubtedly the first to go. The locative/dative contrast is probably also going to quietly dis-appear as well. I also feel like the ablative is not likely to survive, as it only occurs in the singular of this declension, though I might decide to repurpose the form, as it is highly distinctive. I'm using the *-osyo genitive, in line with Indo-Iranian and Tocharian.

The nominative-accusative dual would end up as wəkɛː, being homophonous with the instrumental singular. Assuming Uralic contact, there may yet be a future for the dual as a category, however it is unlikely this ending will survive to fulfill that role, and indeed at this stage the language will probably lack it.

Note that the language is an *-obʰos branch like Indo-Iranian, as opposed to Slavic/Germanic's *-omos.

So here is further support for the loss of the locative, since the plural is homophonous with the genitive singular. The homophony of the *-oy variant of the nominative plural with he locative/dative singular lends support for the *-ōs variant of the nominative plural. This lends further support additionally for the repurposing of the -t of the ablative singular for the instrumental to enhance its distinctiveness.

Edit: An addendum: I forgot the neuter o-stems. As usual, the nominative and accusative of neuter nouns are identical. With the current sound changes the singular and plural of the nominative/accusative (using "yoke") look like they're going to be jukɑ̃ː/jukɛː. I'm unsure whether to reshape the plural to match the masculine, but ether way the resulting paradigm is as follows:

Thank you for the bit on the spontaneous nasalisation of open vowels, I wasn't aware. At first I imagined /ɛ/ had so wide an allophony that it reached up to a.
So, the declension cases are definitely going one by one. And no new ones will be created - is it because the postpositions are going the prepositional way?
By the way I have to switch the forum to the Gentium font to be able to see some of your IPA with diacritics the correct way, especially in the monotype blocks.

Interesting. It does look vaguely Tocharian-like, which is something I don't remember seeing done in conlangs before.

Someone must have done a Tocharian-esque IE-lang at some point, I doubt I'm being entirely original here.

Pannonian is a little like this, but there wasn't enough Uralic contact to entirely obliterate the plosive MOA distinction. It's primarily Paleo-Balkan, but there is some evidence that the Tocharians were around there for a while, and there are some developments in common: *d > ts (> s, because *s > *x > h), some *e > ʲə (but schwa is mostly lost later on due to extensive umlaut of mid vowels), an expansion of the case system (although the core NOM/GEN/DAT/ACC system is preserved)...

However, at some point they migrated north, and the overall effect is Shit Balto-Germanic.

So, the declension cases are definitely going one by one. And no new ones will be created - is it because the postpositions are going the prepositional way?

No, that's not the reason; postpositions are going to remain as such. It's a bit complicated really. I guess I don't want to start grammaticalising postpositions before serious Uralic contact, though I guess Tocharian did it anyway so I guess I could do some. It's also a methodological thing - I'm currently working through the inherited morphology, seeing how the case system is likely to end up assuming no new stuff is grammaticalised, and doing so for each declension, before grammaticalising new stuff.

By the way I have to switch the forum to the Gentium font to be able to see some of your IPA with diacritics the correct way, especially in the monotype blocks.

Yeah sorry about that, IPA typeit just doesn't use precomposed characters, all its diacritics are added post hoc, but In any case wherever you see ɑ you'll know it's nasalised as it isn't used anywhere else without nasalisation.

Just commenting to let you know I'm following and that I really like this so far (it's even inspired me to start working on my PIE lang again). Haven't commented yet because I have nothing substantive to say so far.

So here we can see a significantly different picture to what we saw in the singular o-stem cases. Again the dative-locative distinction looks like it is going to collapse, however the other cases look fairly stable so far. Note however that if a non-schwa vowel were found in the root syllable the genitive would lose the /h/, becoming identical to the nominative.

As we can see, the -eH2 stems show great syncretism in the plural forms - the accusative singular and plural are homophonous, and both are also identical to the genitive plural. The instrumental singular and plural are homophonous, and both are also identical to the dative plural. Finally the genitive singular, nominative plural and locative plural are also identical. The locative is being lost anyway, but that still leaves a massively defective paradigm in comparison to the o-stems. From this we might predict that massive amounts of reshaping are likely, or that the language might reduce its inherited case system at a later stage, or indeed that this stem class may be lost entirely and re-assigned to some other class.

Let us just recapitulate what we currently have so far for this declension class before we survey the alternatives.

As a side note I will consider the -iH2~-yeH2 stems.. Let's create a word Tiːwiː, perhaps the name of a sky goddess (the consort of Tiːwʂ pətɛː). We'll look at the following singular cases to begin with.

From this we can see that the current set of sound changes level the alternation in the suffix, but there is quantitative ablaut in the root. We can probably add an instrumental tiwiːp to this as well, but the dative is harder to securely derive, and would likely be syncretic with the nominative singular anyway. So I don't think I'll keep this declension type - the female sky goddess will be Tiːwɛː, using the -eH2 stem form.

Interesting. It does look vaguely Tocharian-like, which is something I don't remember seeing done in conlangs before.

Knowing basically nothing of Tocharian, what is Tocaharian-like in this lang?

I think they're referring in particular to the collapse of the stop system and the new fricatives. Aside from that there's not that much in common, at least not yet (when I'm done with inherited noun morphology I might start making it more Tocharian-esque with the new stuff that's coming along).

As you can see, there is loads of syncretism in the paradigm as we can see. Interestingly the locative case appears to syncretise with the genitive & instrumental, not the dative as with the previous declensions, however I still think collapsing of the dative and locative is likely.

This is interesting: the cases are distinguished, however the forms themselves do not entirely with those of the o-stem nouns despite being shared, notably the -p form being used for the instrumental as opposed to the dative. Nevertheless some collapse does seem inevitable to me. Thus I am content for now to partially re-analyse the -s suffix as being part of the inflection, and thus reshape the dative singular and genitive plural along the lines of the o-stems, which, coupled with the loss of the locative, gives the following paradigm.

From this I can now see a few possibilities for reshaping the o-stem neuters in turn. Furthermore it is likely that the daughter languages will merge this declension with the o-stems completely, due to the evident similarities.

Once again we collapse the dative and locative, though with the actual form of the locative winning out due to its identity with the o-stem dative. I'm not entirely sure what to make of the length alternation (where long reflects and original full grade and short reflects an original zero grade). It appears to be the only thing currently distinguishing the nominative and instrumental, so for the ancient language I think I will retain it, with the daughter languages levelling it, probably once there has been innovated a new means of distinguishing the two cases.

Note again the importance of length in this declension, as the genitive plural is also distinguished from the accusative singular solely by this means. And again as in the -eH2 stems note the dative/instrumental plural homophony.

Once again we collapse the dative and locative, though with the actual form of the locative winning out due to its identity with the o-stem dative. I'm not entirely sure what to make of the length alternation (where long reflects and original full grade and short reflects an original zero grade). It appears to be the only thing currently distinguishing the nominative and instrumental, so for the ancient language I think I will retain it, with the daughter languages levelling it, probably once there has been innovated a new means of distinguishing the two cases.

Concerning root ablaut in i- and u-stems, there's an important fact that non-professionals are mostly unaware of: it's reconstructed entirely due to structural reasons (root ablaut is preserved some consonant stems, which must be archaic), and no attested IE. language has preserved it as such - all that remain are isolated doublets such as firth (e-grade) ~ ford (zero grade).

Rather, it seems that already by late PIE., root ablaut was eliminated in i- and u-stems (i-stems tend to generalize zero grade, u-stems tend to generalize e-grade), and they started to behave as vowel stems in terms of ablaut and accent (fixed, barytone/oxytone accent closely but not entirely following ablaut: there were also e-grade oxytones and zero grade barytones).

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A linguistics enthusiast who would like to make a conlang, but can't decide what to call what.

I was looking forward to your post on the s-stems, and as expected it was a good one. I really enjoy reading through your thought process as you work through syncretism in and analogy from the output forms, especially here where they have a few really notable features (instrumental -p, tons of syncretism in the singular but none in the plural, etc.). When you derive the daughter languages, I'll be excited to see what happens to them.

Once again we collapse the dative and locative, though with the actual form of the locative winning out due to its identity with the o-stem dative. I'm not entirely sure what to make of the length alternation (where long reflects and original full grade and short reflects an original zero grade). It appears to be the only thing currently distinguishing the nominative and instrumental, so for the ancient language I think I will retain it, with the daughter languages levelling it, probably once there has been innovated a new means of distinguishing the two cases.

Concerning root ablaut in i- and u-stems, there's an important fact that non-professionals are mostly unaware of: it's reconstructed entirely due to structural reasons (root ablaut is preserved some consonant stems, which must be archaic), and no attested IE. language has preserved it as such - all that remain are isolated doublets such as firth (e-grade) ~ ford (zero grade).

Rather, it seems that already by late PIE., root ablaut was eliminated in i- and u-stems (i-stems tend to generalize zero grade, u-stems tend to generalize e-grade), and they started to behave as vowel stems in terms of ablaut and accent (fixed, barytone/oxytone accent closely but not entirely following ablaut: there were also e-grade oxytones and zero grade barytones).

You know we actually spent half of my philology lecture this morning talking about this exact thing in the case of *sweH2dus, I probably should have remembered that.

[Also yeah just a meta note: part of the reason I'm doing this is because I'm taking an IE philology paper this year, which is under the classics faculty in Cambridge, so if I'm seeming a bit out of date with my IE stuff that's why]

Edit: EDIT: because Sanskrit shows a reflex which reflects a syllabic nasal, and I need an excuse to have more short ɑ̃ in the language, I've decided on mɑ̃t, with a short vowel throughout the paradigm. Other such nouns which don't have syllabic sonorants will likely instead get full grade.